Hood River Water Treatment

We stayed at Viento State Park overnight earlier this year. Lovely state park, but ironic that it has no sewer dump in spite of most campsites having water and electric hookup and there being very good running water bathroom and shower facilities in the park. I had to find a dump station nearby before we headed farther on our journey. Using one of my Internet camping tools I found out that Hood River maintains a dump station at their treatment plant.

To get there take exist 63 off from I-84 and turn north onto 2nd Street. This area of Hood river is a gentrified industrial zone with a bunch of mixed use buildings. Turning left onto Riverside Dr. will take you directly to the treatment plant. Turn right onto N. 8th St and the dump station entrance is your first left. If you are a big rig or long you may want to take an alternate route. In that case, take N. 2nd St. to where it stops at Portway Ave, turn left and drive to N. 8th St. Turn left onto N. 8th St. Then you will turn right into the dump station entrance.

The dump station driveway is a generous semi-circle. The dump port is well used, but functional. It is well protected from uncontrolled spills as the port is well below grade and the concrete slopes down to the hole. When I was last there the dump cover was connected to a pull chain so you could limit how much bending down you had to do and how close and personal you had to come to the dump port. A little inconvenient to pop the port open with your foot based upon how the concrete is constructed around the port. The treatment plant facility as a whole was a little odoriferous when I was last there so it isn't a place you hang out at for the fun of it.

Potable water is farther forward. Its position is far enough away from the dump station to not give you the heevy-geevies about refilling your fresh tank close to the dump station, and you can be filling your fresh while somebody else is dumping. It wasn't super busy when I was there, but as I left somebody else was just pulling in. This dump station certainly isn't a secret, but I also think that it is mostly locals that know about it.